Hi John, (01)
Agree with your comments, but ... (02)
I read ChrisM's comment (below) differently - maybe incorrectly.
CM> "There is a strong philosophical *intuition* that a set of OWL or CLIF
statements is only a *representation* and that an *ontology* is the
information such a representation expresses."
I assumed that where ChrisM was talking about information - he was not
talking about what the representation is intended to represent. To my ear it
sounds odd to call this 'information'. (03)
Similarly, his comment (below) seems to suggest this information is not
tangible and testable.
CK> "The only tangible, testable objects we have to work with are the
representations themselves."
Most of the systems I work with, the represented objects are far more
tangible and testable than the representations. (04)
If I have understood correctly ChrisM was making a different point - but
maybe I have misunderstood. (05)
Regards,
Chris (06)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: 12 January 2011 14:15
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] I ontologise, you ontologise, we all mess
up...
>
> Folks,
>
> Digital computers don't do nuances.
>
> That means anything that is designed to be implemented on a computer must
> be precisely defined. But the methods by which people design their
> implementations are open to all the same kinds of informal intuitions and
> practices that scientists use to get new ideas.
>
> I would qualify Chris P's comment:
>
> > I find amusing that the Gruber CS-AI sense seems to go out of its way
> > not to talk about the things that the philosophy sense does.
>
> Tom Gruber's definition is Tom's own personal view. The term
> 'conceptualization' comes from the book _Logical Foundations of AI_ by
> Genesereth & Nilsson, which is more nuanced. But there are as many CS or
AI
> views as there are people working in CS or AI.
>
> I agree with Chris M:
>
> > What, exactly, is the "expressing" relation between a representation
> > and an ontology so understood?
> > It seems to me that there are no scientifically rigorous answers to
> > these questions.
>
> I don't believe that it's possible to state a precise definition of what
an
> ontology is or should be. It's better to use Wittgenstein's method for
defining
> 'game':
>
> Give a bunch of examples and say "These are ontologies.
> An ontology is anything that is more similar to these things than to
anything
> that is not usually called an ontology."
>
> I wouldn't say that such a definition is "unscientific".
> It allows progress, but it doesn't rule out critiques about some practices
that
> may be better or worse than others.
>
> That is, in fact, how mathematicians define 'number'. They started with
> positive integers. Then they added rational numbers, irrational numbers,
> zero, negative numbers, imaginary numbers, complex numbers, quaternions,
> numbers modulo some integer, floating point numbers, fixed point numbers
> with various criteria for what happens to overflows...
>
> Just as the concept of number grew as a result of the way that working
> mathematicians talked about their work, the concept of an ontology is
going
> to grow. Any attempt to edict a definition in terms of necessary and
sufficient
> conditions would be counterproductive -- it would needlessly restrict
> innovation.
>
> John
>
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